KOR

Knights of Round is a band name that often pops up when surfing through j-metal sites. Their genre is power metal and very melodical one. Singer is good and playing usual high level of J-metal. So you know what you get. Double bass drums, twin leads, clean vocals. I really like it and one of the reasons is that I used to play exaclty similar style of music and will do in near future too ^_^ (stay "tuned" if you like bands like this)

Chernoblank

I saw acoustic bass and image of metal band. This needs to be checked.

this is basic metal, nothing to complain. Worth checking out but was not any big thing for me. I liked most the rythm change in the middle and also groove part is nice.

Karmachain

I have many times heard name of Karmachain but never heard any music of them. I also knew that SadeW (ex- Blood Stain Child) is the singer. They play very soft melodic music as _metal_ but singing makes this metal. Or not? It doesn't matter. It does that I like this song and its refreshed sound in JMetal. Very stylish music.

One More Metal Touhou - Stratiotes

My friends bandmate seems to have his own Touhou projec. It is good for my taste so please listen to some Stratioes. Good stuff from a drummer!

Inhale - Sanctuary

Some times ago I ordered a demo from Inhale but due to some problems it never reached me. Maybe Japan post couldn't handle the hot hot demo package. Anyway one of the songs the demo is Sanctuary featuring the new vocalist Jeff.  I really like this song and even the demo quality is IMO very good. Better than some real records I own. Surely one of the best bands in Japan.



And what about the news from Sophias mixi page that said about the long European tour. You can't know how much I have waited this. Do I finally get the chance to see them 3rd time. Do they come to enough close to my country?

Error II

Error has released new mini album Vbleach. So you need to check out what they have recorded for us:

 

new stuff from Shatter Silence

Just read about this at Inhales guitarists mixi page. As he said catchy melodeath!! Listen it NOW!

BSC@ A-KON

BSC topic is perfect for today when they left the soil of Japan to fly to USA A-KON 2011. They released few days ago a new song from their new album at myspace. But as I though someone had already uploaded it into youtube.

Marchen Station

Following Mixi 'Ashiato' brought me to the band Marchen Station. Its pure xa-metal 'kusa metaru'. Singer Leo Figaro is very good and maybe due to that he is also involved in some other bands/projects. Songs are pure xa-metal so you get what you expect. Excellent high speed guitar playing and orchestrations and melodic choruses.

Darkness Rose EP review

I heard about Darkness  Rose after the founding member Erica choose follow her own path from the band Sincerity Green. After getting the band going on they gave now released a debut EP. And I'm thankful that Erica was kind to send me a one so doing a review is the least I can do for them.

Darkness rose is five piece band from Tokyo playing symphonic gothic metal with some Finnish taste in it. I thought they uses support drummer in l their gigs but it was old information. They have got a drummer recently. For more inormation check their official site: www.darknessrose.com and listen to their music!

And the review itself.

EP starts with intro which raises the atmosphere to the first full song. At this part its clear that the sound quality is good. Balance between the instruments is mixed well and I like the way of using synths during the all songs.

Songs have dynamics in different parts. It is a sign of good songwriting and arrangement skills. So I'm sure that Darkness Rose members have quite much experience from the other bands before making this recording.

Female singing is done well and really well if compared to many bands in Japan.  Because there are some really bad ones even on the official recordings where even autotune/melodyne doesn't save the performance. But coming back to the topic  It would be nice to hear some male vocals on the next recording, may be in some choruses. It would bring the band to the next level. But that is only my wish and not a negative comment.

Highlight of the EP  fro me is the 4th track 'Dying Days' which begins with really cool melody continuing into the verse that has nice rythmic riffing. Rest of the song is as good so its very enjoyable. 

EP ends with a dramatic song which gives a promise that we'll here more about this band later. I think fans of Within Temptation and similar female fronted bands would spin this release quite often in their mp3 players. And I have to mention that Darkness Rose doesn't sound like WT but it tells that I'm not an expert in this genre.


EP:
Darkness Rose- s/t

Song list:
01. intro
02. The Prison Wall
03. Army Brain
04. Dying Day
05. Nobody Warms

Thank you for reading my first EP/CD review ever. It'd be cool to get some comment if you want to get more of this kind of posts or any other comments about this blog. I'd like to kno if you would like to see just new pv's or e-mail interviews or just this same thing I've been doing halfly motivated?

Error

This is Osaka based core band playing happy music. Just another band showing high quality of the metal scene in Japan.


More info from their official site: www.errorsite.jp



And if you haven't yet heard about BSC's next album'ε psilon' its release day is 15th June 2011 and here is the small version of the album artwork.

My Music Life

404NOT FOUND has released a new single.  Sounds quite mainstream me but because the quality is top notch its only a good thing. Good happy song to the spring!

130311 afterlife

Life goes on and death is still so close. We never know whats ahead us. 130311 was a big shock even for years been talk about  that the big earthquake will strike Japan. It took time to get back into normal life even living so far away from Japan. So I took time off from this blog. But now I want to share one link to the site that gives me hope because I see it in these posters:

Iwate Posters

Song for today is Each For The Days. I know only this clip about them and the fact that they play live with Inhale soon. That's where I found the band name.

And then interesting news that Ryu has been hinting many times in his blog. Now its official. I knew only that it is a super secret project with Ettori of the Coroner records. Good suprise that it was a theme compliation album called Princess Ghibli which is in the shops now:

 

Icarus' Cry

I don't know how these guys has so much time. This is another band of Unlucky Morpheus' Yukimura and I know there is at least one more playing more extreme music.
As the name Yukimura promises guitar playing is top notch and joy to listen.

If you like metal touhou doujin music. This is to you.

Infection

Be ready to headbang. Infection plays modern metal with downtuned guitars with heavy distorted tone. But as a good suprise that's not all they have in sleeves. Rythm changes makes their newly published song very promising and this must be a good live band. Thanks for their member leaving "ashiato" to my mixi page.

Davitz

Davitz presents also not so hard modern softer metal music. I give thumbs up that they are not using autotune/moledyne! Its so rare to hear normal vocals so why to care some small pitch problems (or maybe I just have too accurate ear). But DAvits as good groove and sound a bit more unique than some other bands. Hope to hear how they'll progress from this point in future.

Lightning / Sum Rize

There was a band Lightning which I have never heard but as suggested on twitter I checked band Sum Rize which is their new name. I expected this to be some kind of core but was suprised to hear clean singing and twin lead guitars. Melodic metal = good.

Umberbrown

And then back to more poppish sound with these emo kids. Umberbrown doesn't deliver so much originality but their music is melodic, cathcy, singed well (also pronunciation) and played withouth anything bad to say.

I'm sure fans of this kind of music are satisfied.



And yes I tagged also this as j-metal.

Iron Attack

This doujin group mixes cover parts to their touhou arrangements. I like this combination quite much. Only I could hope is that their sound quality would be slightly better but I can live with this stuff without any changes.

This one has plenty of YJM parts with ultramelodic touhou!

Dragon Guardian

Dragon Guardian is doujin band of Yuusha Arthur. Music has usually featuring musicians with familiar names from other circles. Dragon Guardian presents high quality Xa Metal of Japan. Its symphonic, fast, well played, well composed and having japanese narrative speech in songs. This was one of the first doujin bands I found outbut for some reason I have forgot to introduce them.

Dragon Guardian has released four albums and two EP's. So very productive band. If you like powermetal or bands like Rhapsody of Fire this is your music!